1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, a restoring method of BIOS setup thereof, and a restoring program.
2. Description of Related Art
With respect to an information processing apparatus such as a PC (personal computer) or a server, when the information processing apparatus becomes non-bootable for unknown reason, in many cases, the whole information processing apparatus is replaced for restoration. If the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) of the information processing apparatus is bootable before replacing the information processing apparatus, it is possible to record setup values (e.g., the priority of booting storage devices, validity/invalidity of each onboard device such as a RAID board, a sound board, or a LAN controller board, etc.), for example, a sheet of paper, so that the same setup values as those of the unbootable information processing apparatus are used in a replacement information processing apparatus by manually setting the setting values in the replacement information processing apparatus. However, if the BIOS of the information processing apparatus is unbootable, the setup values cannot be acquired, which is a problem because the previous setup values cannot be used in the replacement information processing apparatus. In such a case, the setup values, which have not been used as the previous setup values, are set for a replaced information processing apparatus. However, it is time-consuming work, and sometimes, the replaced information processing apparatus does not achieve the expected performance because of a setup error or the like, resulting in unnecessary operation costs.
As a setup value of BIOS is the unique data assigned to a single model of information processing apparatuses, the setup value cannot be applied to another model of an information processing apparatus. Furthermore, if a setup value of the unbootable information processing apparatus is applied to the replaced information processing apparatus whose model is different from that of the unbootable one, a problem may occur in that the replaced information processing apparatus may not perform normal operations. Thus it is required for preventing an unmatched setup value from being used for different model information apparatuses.
Furthermore, patent documents 1-4, which respectively correspond to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication Nos. 2008-200943 (patent document 1), 2000-235483 (patent document 2), 2006-190061 (patent document 3), and 2009-211170 (patent document 4), describe the related art discussed above.
In order to solve the issues described above, a method is described in patent document 1 which proposes that a replacement apparatus is prepared for an original apparatus in advance, so that the setup value of the original is applied to the replacement apparatus and the original setup is restored when the original apparatus breaks down. However, this method costs for two apparatuses because this method needs to prepare the replacement apparatus.
Further, a method is described in patent document 2 which proposes that setup values of an original apparatus are backed up and the setup value is restored from the backup, so that the restoration is possible when trouble happens However, this method requires a user to manage the restoration. In addition, when the BIOS of the apparatus is unbootable, the setup value cannot be restored.
A method described in patent document 3 proposes that an attachable/detachable nonvolatile memory stores and uses a setup value that has been changed. However, since this method can set only a part of the changed setup value, another part of setup values are left in an original apparatus as being stored. In this case, there is a problem that when the original apparatus breaks down, another part of the setup values left in the original apparatus cannot be acquired, and therefore the setup value cannot be restored.
Furthermore, a method is described in patent document 4 which can store the changed information of a system configuration in an attachable/detachable nonvolatile memory and multiple systems can read out the changed information. However, in this method, in most cases, the setup values of BIOS cannot be apply to information apparatuses of different models, such problem needs to be solved.